Fear not, speed-hungry pro users: Those Geekbench scores for the new Mac Pro's CPU earlier this summer apparently don't tell the whole tale, with a second round of tests showing more impressive results.

An AMD-led team has set a new Guinness World Record for the “Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor” by cranking up a soon-to-be-released chip to 8.429GHz. Pause for a nanosecond to let that number sink in: that’s eight billion, four hundred twenty-nine million cycles per second.

What is it about guys? Give them something fast and their immediate impulse is to make it faster.

On November 15, pause to raise a pint to the 40th birthday of the original microprocessor. On that day in 1971, Electronic News carried an ad for the Intel 4004, the precursor of all processors, including the ones running your Mac and your iPhone -- and, for that matter, your car and your coffeemaker.